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Robert Crisman's Blog – March 2010 Archive (28)

Time's Up!

And then day became night and, up ahead now, lights were blinking, all day-glo colors, arranging themselves into words that spelled out--The Exit?

From Heaven?

St. Peter showed up on a barge with guns mounted foredeck and aft, and with him, St. Michael the Archangel, looking all bad-ass, dressed like a Ton Ton Macoute, with the shades, the beret, the whole fuckng bit.

St. Pete tried to reason, but Michael kept tapping his whipstick against… Continue

Added by Robert Crisman on March 31, 2010 at 10:02pm — 1 Comment

Dry Rot

Seattle's a happy-face sinkhole alright, but at least it's in step with everywhere else. A significant chunk of the world economy's gone off the cliff and people are starting to wake to the fact that the check is not in the mail. Meanwhile, the country's at war for the eight trillionth year in a row, with no end in sight, and the 21st Century's stone fucking drag time all over.

Purely local travail seems in fact a bit of a chump-change concern; how… Continue

Added by Robert Crisman on March 31, 2010 at 9:30pm — 3 Comments

The More Things Change...

Nineties Seattle: Nirvana, dot.com, Starbucks, and "hip" squares for years--the 20th Century's swan song.

A lot of sewage has vaulted the dam since those halcyon days: NASDAQ pancaked; the WTO and Fat Tuesday riots tore up the town; Boeing flipped us the bird and left without telling the mayor; Broadway ran out of steam and Seattle sort of fell off the map of hot places.

Some things stayed the same: rents kept on climbing; a sizeable number of people continued to sleep under bridges,… Continue

Added by Robert Crisman on March 31, 2010 at 9:24pm — No Comments

What To Expect At Danny Mizell's III

"So now, Ramon said, "Mizell. He's gonna be sitting around in there loaded as dump trucks sometimes, and a whole boatload of bad-asses are gonna come busting on in there. Heard it around from his dumb dipshit buddies he's fat, and they're gonna come in and just fucking take it. Unless the cops get his ass, which, give it some time and that's gonna happen. So we have to move. I don't want to go in there a day late or something and all he has left there is bean dip."

Added by Robert Crisman on March 30, 2010 at 12:31am — 1 Comment

What To Expect At Danny Mizell's II

Ramon on Mizell, the guy they were going to rip off: "They're always out in the livingroom, man, him and the bitch, watching TV and eating bean dip or something. House fucking stinks, bitch doesn't clean shit, fucking kitchen, fucking food on the floor, dirty, nasty-ass dishes all over the counter, sink's like some jungle, mold on the fucker...dead rats and winos jammed in the broom closet...

"Fucking… Continue

Added by Robert Crisman on March 30, 2010 at 12:28am — 2 Comments

What To Expect At Danny Mizell's I

Ramon told Eddie and Dennis about the guy they were going to rip off: "Like I said, man, dude has people coming over there all the goddamned time, and he keeps the dope in his basement and thinks he's safe as a baby in church.

"Mizell's living in Disneyland, man. People in and out like it's COSTCO or something, some geek motherfuckers, and he's like it's one big happy family of dopefiends.

"It's like, 'Oh, hey, Juan, they're cool!'" Ramon did the dopefiend's wheeze to a T.

Dennis… Continue

Added by Robert Crisman on March 30, 2010 at 12:22am — No Comments

A Well-Dressed Man

Ramon was sharp as a tack with his shirt of pink pumiced cotton set off by black onyx cufflinks and blood-red silk tie. Also his gray houndstooth virgin wool sportcoat and near-black flannel slacks that broke like smooth waves on the top of his shoes. The shoes were Church's black lizards shined to perfection. His black cashmere topcoat, soft as a dream, lay draped on the backrest beside him.

Ramon in the wind? The very air bled, he was that fucking… Continue

Added by Robert Crisman on March 30, 2010 at 12:16am — 4 Comments

Sweet Reason

Addiction. The demon of demons. Repainting horror as Heaven. It conjures the sights and the sounds and the feel and the taste and the smell of the first ride you took from this hard, stony earth toward nirvana. It speaks in a voice of sweet reason you'd swear was your own. It asks: why go through hell when Heaven's a quick fix away?

Added by Robert Crisman on March 29, 2010 at 3:48am — 4 Comments

Jazz

At the crib after Roanne had left in her slinkies, Michelle mulled things over. Roanne tricking...fucking and sucking old men--yucka pucka...but something about this thing jazzed her.

She heard the echoing click of Roanne's heels on her way to her dark assignation...dark assignations downtown...bright lights and fast ladies and dangerous, beautiful men in the shadows...latenight laughter and whispers that… Continue

Added by Robert Crisman on March 29, 2010 at 3:44am — 2 Comments

Query Letter

Dear Editor,

I've attached a short story I wrote called "It Looked Good On Paper" which follows two men, Eddie and Dennis, who knock off a dopehouse and run into more than they planned on.

The heist was supposed to be easy, a quick in-and-out, but Dennis went apeshit and wiped out three people, including a bystander outside the house. The town is now on fire for our guys and all roads away look like fast routes to hell. Noir city, but that's… Continue

Added by Robert Crisman on March 29, 2010 at 3:31am — 3 Comments

The Prison of Skin III

Women, you see, are forever for sale, even after having been bought. What is bought, after all, can always be dropped at the second-hand store for resale; marked down to be sure.

Dread seeps into muscles and marrow to molder, metasticize, kill, and for some girls, those low in the running or those with a spark who seek to break free of skin's prison, a recourse is dope.

There are girls as well whose price tag is up there whose dread is merely a dark, formless pressure brought on by the… Continue

Added by Robert Crisman on March 28, 2010 at 4:18am — 1 Comment

The Prison of Skin II

Michelle and Sarah'd been raised to be blowup dolls, nothing but surface, bait for the Movers and Shakers in Benzos and Beamers who live behind walls with armed guards and run empires. Blowup dolls' price tags run higher or lower according to tit-size, et al., along with what style and con and panache they can muster in places where buyers all gather to bid.

Life in the prison of skin!

There are compensations: a girl can go shopping wherever the finest accessories are sold. She can… Continue

Added by Robert Crisman on March 28, 2010 at 4:10am — 1 Comment

The Prison of Skin I

Michelle and Sarah were cynical, yes, their cynicism carefree and light, born of the relative undeserved ease of their lives in a hard, mirthless world.

There existed within them the deeper perdition, of course, the perdition of Culture. American Culture, the 21st Century suburban version, made up of Strip Malls From Hell.

Strip Malls From Hell! Fool schools for young girls and boys who have learned by the time they are nine to dress up as crack hos and pimps to go tricking and treating… Continue

Added by Robert Crisman on March 28, 2010 at 4:05am — 1 Comment

Worship

He told her he worshipped the ground that she walked on and meant it, or seemed to. A bit of disgust made a home in her throat. Worship, she knew, is offered to gods, "superior beings" created by us to avoid facing life as it is.

Worship is craven. We prostrate ourselves, kiss the ground, and moan in the shadow of what we know not; what is this other than rank self-abasement run riot?

Worship, so seemingly humble, possesses a flipside as well: the well-cloaked desire of devils to… Continue

Added by Robert Crisman on March 28, 2010 at 12:00am — No Comments

Roanne Greets the Day

Shutting the door, she put her purse in the sink, dug in it and brought out a rig and a spoon and her wakeup, a good quarter-gram of the brown that looked just like ratshit. She put the purse and the rig and the spoon on the toilet tank then and turned on the tap, just a trickle.

She filled the spoon, dropped in the dope, lit a match, and held it under the spoon until dope and water were bubbling and stinking like goats. She placed the spoon gently, gently down on the sink, then quickly… Continue

Added by Robert Crisman on March 27, 2010 at 11:30pm — 2 Comments

For the Dreamers Among Us

Ma Cacciatore, also known as the Battleship Bismarck, got sick of Seattle, dreamed dreams, answered an ad in Soldier of Fortune, and shipped off to kill folks in places it's legal. One bloody campaign she met Hattie Mae Goebbels, best described as cement with an attitude problem, who'd strangled her husband, the dopeman Odell, in their bathroom one night--after first removing the cash from the safe--and lit out two steps ahead of the cops.

Mom and Hattie Mae bonded and wound up commanding a… Continue

Added by Robert Crisman on March 27, 2010 at 9:52pm — 1 Comment

A Cure For What Ails Us

Tea party gunmen are calling Black congressmen n----rs these days right out loud and there's going to be more where that came from because racists now think that it's safe to come out of their shitholes and stink up the land.

And why not, when all "progressives" can think of to do is call upon people to email Republican hotshots and ask them to rein these guys in--a strategy somewhat akin to calling on Himmler to disavow death camps.

Let's get it straight: these tea party guys are a… Continue

Added by Robert Crisman on March 27, 2010 at 1:15am — 2 Comments

Lowball Emporium Three

Danny sold stuff that he shagged from folks' basements and stored all the stuff in his room in the meantime. He went through the good stuff, ba-zap, just like that, and then he had nothing but landfill.

He had acres and acres of scrofulous horseshit that nobody'd buy in 10 million years, "and the worst of it was, I had like these eight tons of records, LPs and singles, all the top hits from the '50s or something:… Continue

Added by Robert Crisman on March 26, 2010 at 12:44pm — No Comments

Lowball Emporium Two

Danny'd been working a nine-to-five job, but got sick if it, man, so he quit. He got his last check and, boom boom boom boom, rent, groceries and smokes and a little bud on the side, and in a week he was broke as a dog.

Now what? He had to eat the last time he checked, so he sorted his options: go rob a bank; visit the houses where people aren't home; sell dime bags to dipshits; stand on a corner and wave his dick at the first cop he saw.

Jailhouse options for sure.

Of course,… Continue

Added by Robert Crisman on March 26, 2010 at 12:33pm — No Comments

Lowball Emporium One

Guys hustle because they don't want to work. Danny found out that not working's a job.
Hard fucking job--and they don't even have to give you a check.
He was selling stuff out of the trunk of his car that month. All sorts of stuff that people had let him take out of their basements.
He got what he got from those basements, and therein lies a bit of a tale.

Added by Robert Crisman on March 26, 2010 at 12:28pm — No Comments